


let the caffeine do the talking

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Community: galentinesday, Episode Related, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two weeks and B'Elanna's still bothered. (Post-"Random Thoughts".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let the caffeine do the talking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> Written for the 2014 [galentinesday](http://galentinesday.dreamwidth.org) fic exchange on DW. (Title from Kate Voegele's 'We the Dreamers'.)

Two weeks have passed, and B'Elanna is still waking up in the dead of the night, fingers knotted in sweat-dampened sheets, breathing hard, jarred out of nightmares of the hands of Mari security guards digging into her shoulders. The bruises have faded to nothing by now, the Klingon in her skin proving ironically resistant to the mementos of battle, but she remembers the pressure of the restraint in an uncharacteristic, lingering way.

Tom hovers around her, kind-hearted and hesitant, unaware of how best to help but determined to let her know he's there, and she's grateful but unsure, as ever, in which way to respond. Nothing serious ended up happening to her, after all; Tuvok's timing ensured that she suffered far less trauma than she could have – or would have – had the engrammatic purge been allowed to run to completion, but still she remains uncomfortable, jumpy, warier of passing shadows than she had been before; somehow fit not quite right inside her skin.

Is she different? She wonders, as she paces about engineering, a repetitive course between the warp coils and the diagnostic she's running, which seems less efficient today than it has in years. Has it changed her, the almost-undergoing of this process, this partial-purging? Has it taken some of who she was away?

She finds herself thinking, finds herself eyeing her shipmates with a scrutiny she hasn't adopted since Vorik, finds herself trying to assess her reactions to their behaviour. Harry Kim alternates between babbling on about his latest alien love and his clarinet – it's irritating, isn't it? Shouldn't it be? Is she being too patient? Samantha Wildman comes in to pick up some PADDs and she's carrying the child, who starts crying, and B'Elanna doesn't tell her to get that screaming thing the hell out of her engine room. Neelix drops by in the middle of a crucial piece of repair work, concerned she's not eating, a tray of something blue and spongy-looking in his arms, and she actually thanks him before asking him to set it aside, and promising she'll (at least try to) eat it later. If this were last week, would she have found the interruption less tolerable? Had she already gotten softer, because of Tom, because of the captain, because of living on Voyager and finding herself infected with Starfleet optimism, or is this rather a result of some missing engrams?

The computer signals her with a progress report – still nothing, commencing third phase of diagnostic – and she leans, too heavily, against the railing encircling the warp core. It hums gently at her, powered down to its customary gamma shift settings, and she tries to feel the reassurance in its steadiness that she normally would feel. Restlessness reaches her instead, vibrates up through the floor and into her legs, propels her toward the diagnostic screen again: no change. She adjusts the parameters, restarts the scan, and sighs. Engineering is empty but for her; Seven of Nine has thankfully gone off to regenerate, and the skeleton crew of gamma shift are elsewhere about the ship, seeing to routine repairs that are more difficult to complete when the ship is in the full swing of its quasi-daylight hours. There's no one about to disturb her or criticise her work, and it's a quick moment of decision that has her logging her security code into the diagnostic console – just in case – and headed out the double doors at a brisk pace.

She doesn't have any doubt that she would be left alone, at this time of night, were she to happen to cross paths with anyone, but she doesn't; she winds her way around the corridors of deck 7, slower now, strides out the rhythm of her thoughts as they pound through her mind. She takes a corner with greater speed as she feels the phantom pressure of Guill's hands on her shoulders, lengthens her stride at the memory of the expression on Chief Nimira's face as B'Elanna was dragged over and manhandled into the chair: rigid, determined, just compassionate enough to make B'Elanna's blood boil, but not enough to do anything about it.

The turbolift doors open on deck 1 before she realises what she's doing, and Tuvok glances over from his seat in the captain's chair to greet her with a nod; to his credit, he doesn't even look vaguely Vulcan-surprised to see her there, at this hour, only says, “Good evening, Lieutenant Torres. May I be of assistance to you?”

She steps onto the bridge and hesitates. Why is she here? “No, thank you, Lieutenant.” She casts a glance at the ready room door and realises she does know, cocks her head towards it. “Is she in?”

Now Tuvok does lift an eyebrow. “It is past 0300 hours. The majority of the crew is, one may presume, in a solid state of REM sleep.”

B'Elanna shrugs. “So?”

“So: naturally, the captain is in.”

She cracks a smile and turns to the ready room. “Naturally. Thanks, Tuvok.”

“You are welcome. Lieutenant,” he adds, as her hand lifts to alert the captain to her presence. “If I may say so, I do believe that a solid state of REM sleep would not go amiss for you, either.”

She forces herself not to roll her eyes – at least until she's turned around again – and then wonders, would she have been so careful, this time last month? She says nothing, turns away.

There's a moment's pause before she hears the words, “Come in,” float back in response to her call, and then, as the doors slide open to admit her, “I don't know how many times I have to tell you, Tuvok, I'm not going to leave until I've – oh.”

“Hi,” B'Elanna says, and then wants to wince. What is it about the captain that can still make her stumble over her words, even after four years?

“Hi,” Janeway echoes. She sets her PADD down beside her on the couch and reaches out to take a sip of coffee; makes a face as soon as she does. “Damn, it's cold. Computer, what time is it?”

“The time is 0326 hours.”

Janeway looks at B'Elanna. “How time flies when you're reading statistical reports.”

“Sure,” B'Elanna says. She's still standing at the entrance of the ready room, and Janeway beckons her over, standing herself and stretching her back with an ominous crack that has B'Elanna really wincing. “Have you been here since the end of alpha shift?”

Janeway rolls her neck into a nod. “Perhaps Tuvok has a point about occasionally taking a break. I feel like my shoulders are made of titanium.”

Despite herself, B'Elanna smiles; sometimes Janeway has a knack of expressing things exactly as B'Elanna herself would, were she more about thinking up metaphors and less about kicking uncooperative consoles were they deserve it.

Janeway walks to the replicator and exchanges her cold cup of coffee for a fresh one, glances over her shoulder. “Would you like anything?”

“No, thank you.”

She takes the newly-steaming mug out of the replicator, inhales so deeply B'Elanna is almost – almost – tempted to squirm, and lifts her eyes. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant? Please, have a seat.”

B'Elanna is grateful for the excuse to take up a few extra seconds walking over to the sofa and sitting down, an unfamiliar, somewhat uncomfortable position to be in – she can't remember the last time she sat here, not even really close to the captain but still very much in her space, or even if she ever has – and none of it aided by the fact that she has no idea why she's here, and no idea at all how she should proceed.

Janeway is watching her in that expectant but patient way that she's perfected, and B'Elanna feels herself square her shoulders, minutely, against it. Is this something they train into them at Starfleet command school, she wonders? Or did she and Tuvok develop it together?

Increasingly aware of the silence, of Janeway's ease and her own discomfort under it, B'Elanna clears her throat, shifts forward on her seat, and says, “I'm not really sure what brought me here.”

Janeway waits, maybe for her to say something more, but she doesn't. “Trouble sleeping?”

“No,” B'Elanna says; it's the truth, at least today.

Janeway peers at her, discerning. “Did you try?”

B'Elanna resists the urge to glare (and then wonders why). “I was running diagnostics. Seven of Nine busy regenerating... it's the best time to do it.”

Janeway doesn't look convinced, but quirks a smile at the barb about Seven and humours her enough to say, “Of course.” She can't judge B'Elanna, anyway, not for this; she knows as well as B'Elanna does that it would be very easy to call her out on hypocrisy as they sit here in her ready room at 0300 hours. “But something prompted you to leave.” It's something less than a question, something more than a subtle hint, and B'Elanna is nodding before she can give it much thought.

“Could you still feel it, afterwards? When the Srivani had left?”

To her credit, Janeway doesn't look surprised, just allows a moment before she provides an answer. “Yes and no. No, because once they'd gone, the relief at not having some damned misguided sense of scientific curiosity sticking into my temples at all hours of the day was so great, I couldn't help but notice.” She breathes out half a laugh, mostly rueful. “And yes, because even though I knew logically then that they were gone, the knowledge that they were hovering around me all that time and I didn't know it... even now I sometimes catch myself looking for them out the corner of my eye. Not that I'd see them, of course.” Her eyes have been resting somewhere just past the bulkhead above them, but now she refocuses, meets B'Elanna's own. “But the memory of such things doesn't leave one as easily as the perpetrators, does it?”

The gentleness in her voice is there, but Janeway seems conscious of not treating her with kid gloves – and this is the Janeway that B'Elanna will always respect and appreciate, no matter how much there is that she can object to. This is the Janeway B'Elanna came here to see, even if she didn't know it at the time; the words, the comprehension, the captain's easy acceptance of her discomfort serves to uncoil a part of the tension that she's been carrying around in her gut these past two weeks.

“No, it doesn't.” When she laughs it's as unexpected to her own ears as to the captain's, and she shakes her head at Janeway's questioning look. “What is it about us, Captain? The Vidiians, the Enarans, the Srivani, the Mari – how is it that brainwashing aliens keep crossing our path?”

Janeway chuckles, leans forward to retrieve her cup of coffee from the table, and drains it with a tip of her head; B'Elanna watches the line of her throat as she swallows, long and pale and stark-luminescent in the artificial light. She realises too late that she's staring and – flushing, caught out – looks away before Janeway can catch her eye.

“I wonder, B'Elanna, I really do.” She pauses, intent, and angles her body closer to B'Elanna. A moment passes, less uncomfortable than it could have been, before she says softly, “What is it, exactly, that you're thinking?”

She takes a long time to respond, a long time to be able to respond, fighting the flare of indignation that still always comes from someone asking her a personal, psychological question – even when the person is someone she respects and admires, even when she has come to the person for the purpose of discussing things, because it's a person she knows will do so – and forces herself to take a breath. If the Mari have succeeded in rewiring her brain, at least she'll now be patient enough to talk about it. 

“The Doctor said,” she begins, and then stops. Studies the seam of her uniform leg. “The Doctor said they didn't get far, that there are only a few engrams missing. He couldn't reverse it, but he said it shouldn't really make much difference.” She casts her eyes up at Janeway, looks away again. “I know I should probably be grateful, but I still know something's missing. It's still--”

“Still strange?”

“Still wrong,” she finishes, harsher than she intends it, but she knows Janeway knows better than to take it personally. “I feel like they've changed me, like I'm – not myself anymore. Is that crazy? When I know it's just a few engrams?”

“Of course not,” Janeway murmurs. She reaches over and squeezes B'Elanna's knee, just once, just briefly, but the pressure still comes as a surprise – not unwelcome, but B'Elanna wonders, not for the first time, if she will ever get used to the casual way Janeway touches her. Touches everyone, she thinks. “I don't think the extent of the manipulation is really what's in play here – though of course, thank God they didn't get any further.” Her hand is still on B'Elanna's knee, warm through the thinning fabric of her uniform, and it's harder than she'd have expected to pull herself away from the feeling, from the distracting sensation of the captain's unmoving fingers, resting there. “It's rather the fact of the manipulation itself.” A dark look crosses Janeway's face and she murmurs, “I know that's what would disturb me the most, in your position. And it's what disturbs me the most about your position as it is, though I'm not in it.”

Silence reigns, B'Elanna caught between a mild sense of relief that the captain _gets_ it and a far more pervasive sense of restlessness at the way her fingers have started to tap, just lightly, on her kneecap – it seems almost absent-minded, almost thoughtless, but could Kathryn Janeway really not be aware of a motion like this? It's maddening, maddening, and this is a test of B'Elanna's patience that no alteration of her memories could suppress. She is just about to open her mouth to break the silence, to say something, anything, she doesn't know what, just as long as she doesn't have to keep sitting here with the tension thickening and pressing its way into her chest, into her temples – and then Janeway breaks through the haze with the grave words, “I'm sorry, B'Elanna. I should have done something more for you, I should've – I should have done something before it got as far as it did.” She takes a breath, looks at B'Elanna with something like expectation, and B'Elanna is so surprised when she realises why that she lets out a laugh.

“Captain, are you – _apologising_? To me?”

Janeway blinks. “Yes, B'Elanna. I am.”

“But--” she's almost spluttering, but – in this moment, at least – her astonishment is greater than her pride, “-- _why_?”

The expression she's met with is almost comical. “Because I'm sorry. That's usually why people apologise, isn't it?”

“I--” she shakes her head, “--yes, I suppose so. And _thank_ you, Captain, but I really don't understand why you feel you need to. You did get there in time – your call was the reason my brain isn't a plate of scrambled eggs right now.”

Janeway chuckles, finally withdrawing her hand and readjusting herself, crossing one leg over the other, and the loss of contact at her knee leaves a mark of something cool in its place, but B'Elanna can breathe again.

Released, relieved, though she can't let herself think about why, B'Elanna continues, “I don't... blame you, Captain. I know you and Tuvok were working as fast as you could, and that's all I could really ask for, isn't it?” She doesn't wait for a response; doesn't want one. “It's funny, you know – I was actually having a pretty good time until all this happened.”

“So was I. We found all those supplies without having to barter an arm and a leg to get them, the locals were – well, mostly friendly--”

“--Seven of Nine was content to occupy herself somewhere other than my engine room--”

Janeway shakes her head on a laugh and says, wryly, “It's all fun and games until someone gets their memory rewritten.”

She wants to think that it's nothing more than the result of her spending so much time with Tom, the last few weeks, that she snaps her head up at the sound of the captain's word and finds herself laughing, Janeway's eyes dancing at hers. But they're a hook, pulling her in despite her maybe-feeble attempts at resistance, and this is nothing like what she usually feels, is nothing as easily named as what it feels like to be with Tom; this is a fluttering, an unsettling of spirits that has been foreign to her until now. She looks away, momentarily overtaken by the terror that Janeway will see it, will read the thoughts in her eyes the way she has so often done before, and with so many others, and she wonders how she can backtrack, how she can get out of this room before she does any damage--

\--and then Janeway's hand is on hers, cool, thin, elegant fingers clasped around her warm ones, and she is saying something that B'Elanna has to drag herself out of a figurative body of water to understand. “...can't let them win this,” she's saying, and B'Elanna forces herself to focus on the words. How can something so tiny, so innocent as a touch of the knee, a compassionate glance, cause such a reaction? How can something so insignificant have such an effect?

“Even though they got to your memories, even though they managed to 'remove' one or two of your 'violent tendencies', B'Elanna – they haven't taken you from yourself. You remember it, you remember everything – maybe even more than you normally would have, thanks to the mind meld – and you are just as righteously angry right now as you were the moment it happened. You are just as furious at their liberties and their farce of a utopian criminal justice system as you ever have been, or as I can imagine you ever would have been. But most importantly, you are still you because you are in control. They can't change you if you don't let them. Feel what you feel, B'Elanna, react as you do – that is who you are, and that is a wonderful capacity that you have, to know what you're feeling and act in the way that you must act, right at that moment.” She squeezes B'Elanna's hand, once, and twists a rueful smile at her. “That's a liberty that we Starfleet captains are sadly not so often entitled to take, and it's a liberty that comes instinctively to me – and one that, I must admit, I greatly miss the permission to act upon. I'll take the liberty, sometimes, of course, but you don't know how often I'd really like to just let it out.”

B'Elanna's surprise must show on her face, because Janeway chuckles. “This is confidential information, understood?”

“Yes, of course, Captain.”

There is a moment, stretched too long, when their shared gaze passes the length of time traditionally considered comfortable for such things, but neither of them deems it necessary to break away. Then, a breath later, Janeway releases the hand she's still been holding – they're both warm, now – and murmurs, “It's late, and if I'm correct, you're pulling an alpha shift tomorrow.”

“So are you.”

Janeway inclines her head, smirk dusting her lips. “Point taken.”

“I suppose we should go to bed.”

Silence resumes, the words resonating between them too intimate, too innocent, too loud and too bright, and then B'Elanna has to stand, has to put air and distance between them before she--

\--she doesn't finish that thought, can't finish it, not here; not where she still isn't certain that Janeway can't read her mind.

“Yes,” she says, because it's all she can say. “I'm starting to get tired.”

Janeway peers up at her from her seat for a moment, assessing, and then seems to think better of saying anything and stands herself. “Well,” she says, “I bid you goodnight, Lieutenant.”

It's a formality that strikes her as almost stark, after the _B'Elanna_ of the occasion, but it also serves as an anchor to the familiarity of command, far enough away from wherever her mind has been roaming to ground her, and she finds herself grateful. “The same to you, Captain. And – thank you.”

Janeway smiles, genuine and soft around the edges. “Thank you. I'm glad we... had a chance to talk.” She pauses, glances away and then back, and then adds, “You're always welcome here, you know.”

She still isn't sure she does know, even when it's phrased like that, as an indisputable invitation, but she still nods and says, “Thank you." "Well,” she says again, when she starts to feel the inevitable awkwardness pressing into her again, “I'll be going. Goodnight, Captain.”

“Goodnight, B'Elanna. Sweet dreams.”

She goes, doesn't look back; she wonders if she'll dream at all.

She takes the scenic route to her quarters, via deck 11, because of course she isn't going straight to bed when she's got a diagnostic running its final stage (and she bets that Janeway knew she wouldn't, too). It's almost finished, so she sets about writing a memo on the next day's repair work while she waits. The conversation flicks through her mind as she types, Janeway's words, her regret, her engagement with B'Elanna's state of mind, her hand of her knee--

The computer chimes into her thoughts and B'Elanna moves over to the console: mostly clear, warp engines functioning at optimal capacity, slight misalignment in the navigational deflector, but should be routine to fix; she'll get Joe Carey on it when he comes in. Straightforward. Run of the mill, as Janeway would say.

0415; sleep is really on her agenda now, and she yawns as she powers down the systems she's been using for the night, slides a hand along the diagnostic console – an unnecessary, sentimental ritual, but one that she doesn't see the need to give up – and heads home. The words flash through her mind before she can stop them, _We should go to bed_ , and although she's alone, she ducks her head and bites down on a ridiculous, inappropriate urge to smile. This is a quiet, faint, fledgling flicker of wonder, but it's there, and it's something she's going to keep buried inside her, not cherished or fuelled or dissuaded, but left rather to grow or to fade as it will, unaided by the encouragement of something she isn't quite willing to name.

Maybe Janeway was wrong about her not being different, about the Mari not having changed her: maybe they didn't, but maybe they did, and maybe they did it through circumstances and not through the removal of her memories. Maybe the Mari have given her an option, an opening, a door in her peripheral vision that she would neither have seen nor dared open before, and maybe that's the outcome of this event, of all its stress and consternation. And maybe, just maybe, something good might come out of it after all.

She reaches her quarters at an unhurried stroll despite the hour, despite the hint of something like – well, titanium – weighing down her eyelids, and when she enters, the computer reports that a message has been left for her on her personal communication console. Eyebrows raised, she calls to the computer to replay it, and there is Seven of Nine, calmly informing her that it would be prudent for her to make time in the upcoming alpha shift to allow herself to be taught a series of 'more efficient methods' of recalibrating the navigational def--

She hasn't even uttered the words, “Computer, shut it off,” before she realises she's thrown her shoe at the image, where it bounces off once, leaves a smudge in the centre of the screen and then lands casually on the floor at the foot of the console. Seven is gone. B'Elanna is shoeless, but she feels her lips slide up without her knowledge – maybe the Mari didn't get all of her after all.


End file.
